The Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo strain in eastern Congo has grown to 746 suspected cases and 176 deaths, the World Health Organization said in its update issued late on Thursday, a sharp escalation since the agency declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 17. Eighty-five of those cases have been laboratory-confirmed, including two in Uganda; ten deaths among confirmed cases have been recorded so far.
Most of the transmission is concentrated in three eastern Congolese provinces — Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu — where active armed conflict and the displacement of more than a million people are complicating contact tracing and isolation. WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said in a briefing on Wednesday that the response was operating "at maybe half the capacity" of the agency’s 2018-2020 deployment in the same region.
Uganda’s health ministry confirmed last week that two travellers who arrived in Kampala from the DRC tested positive on May 15 and 16. Contact tracing identified more than 280 people so far, and Ugandan authorities have set up isolation units at Mulago National Referral Hospital, Entebbe International Airport and three border posts including Mpondwe in the west.
Unlike the Zaire strain of Ebola, the Bundibugyo virus currently has no approved vaccine and no targeted therapeutics. Standard clinical management — fluid replacement, treatment of secondary infections, and barrier nursing — remains the only option for confirmed cases. WHO said it is accelerating discussions with manufacturers on cross-protection from existing Zaire-strain vaccines and on emergency-use authorisation for monoclonal antibody candidates that have shown laboratory activity against Bundibugyo.
The United States, which has provided most of the rapid-response funding for past outbreaks in the region, has so far committed $42 million in supplemental support through USAID and the CDC. The US Embassy in Kampala said in a notice on Saturday that Americans in Uganda should expect enhanced screening on departure and that consular operations would be limited if cases were detected among diplomatic staff.
Travel and trade impacts have been modest but rising. Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines have introduced symptom screening on flights originating in Kinshasa and Kigali; the African Union’s health agency Africa CDC has dispatched 60 epidemiologists to support the response. Neighbouring Rwanda and South Sudan have not reported confirmed cases but have raised their alert level.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is scheduled to visit Kinshasa and Kampala later this week. The agency has appealed for $180 million to fund the first six months of the response, of which roughly a quarter has been pledged.